Why NASA Is Going Back to the Moon

the launch of Artemis 1 is a big step towards sending humans back to the moon for the first time in 50 years Paving the way for deep space travel and potentially establishing a human Colony on Mars who doesn't want to go back to the Moon I mean come on it's a stepping stone to the rest of our future and we have aspirations aspirations for the moon aspirations for Mars and Beyond the first of NASA's new Artemis program Artemis 1 will Voyage to the moon and back testing two deep space exploration systems the Orion spacecraft and the space launch systems rocket the world's most powerful rocket the Orion spacecraft will fly about 1.3 million miles making this the farthest and longest Mission by any spacecraft built for humans but why does NASA want to return to the Moon NASA scientists hope to eventually establish a more permanent presence on the moon to help launch exploration deeper into space like on Mars we need to go there learn how to live and work sustainably off Earth a lot of people would like to go on to Mars but we have a lot of experience to get under the belt before we can do that Journey to Mars and the Moon is the best place to do it but before we can set foot on the red planet we first need to know what it would take to survive in space luckily for future Moon dwellers we already know about one resource necessary for human survival one of the big surprises in exploring the Moon is the discovery of water water and ice were confirmed on the poles of the Moon in 2018 and a few years later water molecules were also found in the sunlit areas of the Moon if we're going to create permanent living conditions on the moon no hauling water up there that water then we can make sure our humans on the moon survive water on the moon could actually be pretty widespread and it could have another use too rocket fuel but not only that if you split those water atoms differently you can make propulsion some Rockets today rely on liquid hydrogen and oxygen and water is made up of two hydrogen atoms and one oxygen and so instead of starting from Earth to get out to the asteroid belt or tomorrows we can use propulsion that we get from the moon it's a lot easier to Rock It Off the moon there are other valuable resources on the moon and an outer space too like rare earth metals nickel aluminum and platinum we call them rare earth metals because we don't have a lot of them on Earth we know that there are a lot of asteroids out there that are made up entirely of rare earth metals and so if we can access the moon then we can go to those other asteroids and bring all of those resources back but the way those resources are mined and by whom raises a lot of questions the question I have is is it going to be like colonization filled with conflict or will it be more like the way we treat Antarctica scientists work there nobody claims to own any of it and we all share in the discoveries that can be made there there are a number of international agreements that govern space exploration including the outer space tree treaty which says no country can claim territory in space [Music] come the question of if you can't claim territory how can you use the resources President Obama in 2015 signed the asteroid act which says the United States interprets Article 2 to mean that you can't go up and claim like a pot of land but if you extract the resources from that plot of land you own those resources so in my opinion the more we have access to space the more the entire planet of humanity can profit from that we live on a finite planet with finite resources and we're gonna have to get resources from somewhere eventually and these bodies are just they're our neighbors and they have what we need I think that in the future there will be more and more participation if we have a strong global economy as well as stability as far as Explorations go humans have been living in outer space in the International Space Station for decades and before that we'd the space shuttle program and the Apollo program which brought humans to the moon for the first time perhaps future Generations will look at Artemis the way we look at other missions like the First Flight of the Wright brothers that led to Aviation but now we're talking about humans exploring our solar system in person there's a whole universe out there to explore [Music]

Channel: NOVA PBS Official

Views: 38,682

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Id: u-_e_0GIQ_Q

Length: 4min 53sec (293 seconds)

Published: Mon Oct 24 2022